Back to the bones

We headed back to the pile of bones under the bridge today. It was raining again, so I figured it would be a great diversion. My son promptly found a gun stick to poke at the bones. He was fine poking around at the bones themselves but really gave himself a fright when he attempted to move the red mattress sheet. As he moved it with the stick, all sorts of creepy crawlies came running out. I think he really thought there might be a human skull in it. Thankfully only the bugs were hiding out.

I had some fun processing this image. I see something in my head and want to replicate it. I tried the other day in this same place for my 500th, but I didn't quite get it right. Tonight I decided to amp up my Photoshop skills. So this is just one exposure that I used Camera Raw to change the white balance to cloudy and then to export 3 separate jpgs at different exposures (-2,0,2). I then used Photomatix Pro to merge and tonemap the 3 jpgs. Then I brought the single, merged image into Photoshop. I used this HDR layer and then placed the standard photo on the bottom layer. I then erased (at 50%) my son's face, neck and hands. Then I made a layer (curves) mask of everything but my son and adjusted the curves to darken the scene. Lastly I touched up his body with the Dodge tool just to lighten him a bit more. Honestly this took me about 5 minutes total. It's taken me longer just to write this all out.

When I do HDR, I always put it in the tags. I got tired of writing "this is HDR" in my blips.

I've never understood why I'm so drawn to the darker imagery. When I designed websites years ago, I always loved the darker-style sites (still do actually). I enjoy and sort of envy those who are drawn to the lighter styles. Maybe I'm a closet goth girl. :) Who knows.